"Like it or not, children like foods that are energy-dense and not those that are nutrient-rich. That is because children are still growing. That is basic physiology," said Adam Drewnowski, director of the Nutritional Sciences Program at the University of Washington, who was not part of the study.

The findings may not be surprising, but they suggest that exchanging potato chips for cheese or vegetables then might help reduce the amount of kilojoules kids eat at snack time, said Adam Brumberg, one of the authors of the study and the deputy director of the Food and Brand Laboratory at Cornell University.

"If you put into the rotation (healthier snacks) you can have a significant impact on weekly kilojoule intake," he suggested. The study, which was funded in part by the cheese maker Bel Brands USA, involved 183 kids in 3rd through 6th grade.

How the study was done

Each of the kids was put in a room to watch TV and eat a snack - 45 kids were given potato chips, 36 were offered cheese, 59 were given raw vegetables and 43 were given cheese and vegetables. After 45 minutes the researchers measured how much food the children had eaten.

They found that kids in the chip group ate by far the most kilojoules - 2604 on average. Kids ate 840 kilojoules of cheese, 252 kilojoules of vegetables and 714 kilojoules of the combination cheese-and-vegetables snack.

"One thing that was crucial about this study is there was no restriction on the quantity. No one in the snacking conditions ate everything," said Brumberg. In other words, the kids ate until they felt full, and for the potato chip group that meant eating a lot more kilojoules than the cheese-and-veggies group.

Brumberg said there's a lot of conflicting information regarding nutrition and ways to get kids to eat healthy, but restricting kids' diets to only the healthiest of foods might not be the right approach.

"We think that for most people restrictions are setting up an opportunity for you to fail," he said. For some families, restricting snacks to only the healthiest ones is not even possible.

Drewnowski pointed out that children from low income families are affected the most by obesity, and "red bell peppers at $3.99 per pound are not going to solve that problem."

Brumberg suggested that parents should still let kids have the foods they prefer, but limit them. "The most effective way, we believe, is to put (healthy snacks) in the rotation. Don't take away everything that they love, but reduce kilojoules over the week," he said.

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